 Hello, welcome to Quok Talk. I'm Crystal here. Happy Martin Luther King's Day too if you're watching this live. So culturally speaking, body language, there's a lot about a person, gestures, the way you move, the way you present yourself. And particularly through dance, it's really interesting what that kind of conveys culturally because it depends on the culture you're talking about, right? And when it comes to Bollywood, a lot of people think, okay, that's one dance. What does it mean? All the little light bulb turnings. Well, we're going to break that down and understand it through the context of this amazing production that the UHY's Theater Department is putting together coming up. It is a mid-summer night's Bollywood dream that happens, and we're going to talk all about the details later again. But I want to tell you it's a really interesting combination of Bollywood dance meets Shakespeare. I mean, how cool is that? So look at the dates. Remember them. We'll remind you again later. Let's talk to the people involved with this. On the dance side, I have two representing members, the co-director of this wonderful production and a cast member, a dancer and a grad student herself. So let's introduce the two wonderful guests first. We have Professor Sayi. I don't want to screw up your name, so I'm going to let you introduce your name from the Department of Southeast Asian Studies. Southeast Asian. Southeast Asian. My name is Sayi Bhattoreke, and I'm an Associate Professor of Hindi and Urdu Indo-Pacific Languages and also the Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies as a Center. And now I'm the co-director of this play, A Mid-Summer Night's Bollywood Dream. Right. So I think just to start with that, it's such a contradiction or it's just such a weird combination of when you think Shakespeare and Bollywood. How did that idea come to play? I actually don't think it was a contradiction at all because we were, there were a number of plays on the table. So I had, for example, recommended a play from my region, Maharashtra, by Vijay Tendulkar. And then some other South Asian plays were on the table. But then the theater department had lined up a Shakespeare play and the Asian theater program had South Asia also on the, so basically the idea was to combine Western theater program and Asian theater program together and also involve the dance program. So the theater department has many different programs and aspects to it. And this was an amazing way to combine all of them together. And so we actually went to different, we thought about different Shakespeare adaptations that have been going on in Bollywood recently, actually. And with Professor Paul Mitri, who's a co-director, who's a Shakespearean co-director of the play, we figured out that A Midsummer Night's Dream was a perfect example that will allow us an ensemble cast to get as many people as we can, to get as many different expertise acting, singing, dancing all together. And it's a lovely love story filled with romance and magic. If you don't know A Midsummer Night's Dream, you have to come see this, and especially with this Bollywood infusion. Let me introduce our other guest. She's a grad student at UH Manoa as well, but in the East Asian language, is that right? So, Kripa, would you like to introduce a little bit about what you're studying and why you're in this play? Sure. So I am studying Chinese linguistics at UH. And I kind of heard about this as like a way to connect with South Asian culture on campus. I mean, I had a huge kind of presence with that in my undergrad experience, and so I thought, you know, why not? I dance, I have danced my whole life, and especially South Asian dance. So I thought, you know, get involved, I auditioned, and I was able to meet, you know, all these great people who are interested in South Asian culture and who are working with kind of this type of dance. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. So this process has been a very interesting one for yourself. Oh, totally. Yeah. Because I think Bollywood dance in general is kind of based off of the lyrics and the feeling. And so this kind of has this added element of a story similar to Bollywood movies, but we're creating it in a way that I haven't seen before. And so that's been really rewarding. You know, when you think Shakespeare, you think classic, right? You think like, OK, well, you can't alter much of that. So how does the Bollywood, because even the title you've altered it already, how does that change the content? I mean, how much do you keep Shakespearean and how much of the Bollywood cultures infused in it? So this has been a really, really, literally rewarding experience for me. So of course, for Paul Mitri, who is the Shakespeare expert co-director, it is important for him to keep Shakespeare's text, to train his students how to read it, how to deliver it, how to act in it. But at the same time, it is important that Hindi is mixed in it and cultural elements are mixed in it in a way that they don't just feel sort of superimposed on each other, but naturally and creatively fused. So I did a lot of interesting poetry writing for this. So I wrote a Hindi, original Hindi song, several of them, several of them. But the first song is the prologue song, which actually is in the same vein as Shakespeare and also as Indian sort of folk plays where there's a prologue and it says, this is what's going to happen now. And what are we going to see and how excited we are? But they say that in Hindi? So I wrote a Hindi song. I wrote a Hindi song saying Shakespeare is coming to a Bollywood wedding. Let's see what plays they play. And we will craft dreams in half moonlit nights and so on. And then subsequently, throughout the play, I have taken Shakespeare's actual words and then verse translated them in Hindi. So Shakespeare's content, each line translated in Hindi exactly for the content. But in verse, so my Hindi lines rhyme and they have the same meter as Shakespeare's lines. And they work? And they work. And then eventually the Hindi lines rhyme with Shakespeare's lines. So then basically you have this amazing bilingual poem that keeps Shakespeare's content but transforms it in Hindi poetry? I think it transforms the way people approach it too as the actors and dancers. Because when you're speaking a different language, you have to get into the culture of it. So is Puk, Hindi? I mean, is he like, what's his cultural background? Have you transformed some of the characters to be more Indian? Well, Puk is a really interesting example because, so in this context, they've actually split the role and so that's been really great. And so the two actors who are playing the Puk are kind of playing off each other. It's very cool. But also with respect to Hindi, I think this cast has been so receptive and thoughtful about the way that they approach learning the Hindi lines. I'm like, they really want to get it right. And so I don't speak Hindi, but I've been around it my whole life. And so even for me to be able to just kind of like say, this is what it's supposed to sound like. And for the native speakers on our cast, they've been an incredible resource. And our cast has been really kind of willing to ask questions and they ask very thoughtful questions. So in that sense, we've been really lucky because this cast has been so thoughtful with what they're trying to approach. Is most of the Hindi language in the characters of the fairies, the dancers? No, I mean, it's actually interwoven. And you know, all the songs these guys are all singing in Hindi. That's a great experience. I have to say though, it's also very interesting that this way, it's not an adaptation in the normal sense of the term where you just take a story and completely set it somewhere, right? That we're keeping Shakespeare's lines, we're keeping Shakespeare's text and weaving all these things in. And so what happens is we're actually exploring Bollywood as a genre in itself, rather than saying, oh my God, I'm a village woman from some particular place. But also you're going to bring out of this Bollywood dance. So I think the interesting part about this production is that we're exploring Bollywood as a genre. And what it means to have melodrama, to have comedy, to have different, what we call in Bollywood, masala elements, the spice elements, where you have romance and tragedy and magic and comedy. And everything is over the top. And the most interesting part is the self-referential aspect of it. So I've built in visual or auditory or music, iconic music. Are these classic music references from Bollywood? So we took one line from an iconic song and we built a whole different song around it. Can you give an example? Like give one line that's something that is a classic Bollywood and interpret it for us and tells, as a woman's position particularly, how that works and how those words translate into the gestures and therefore into the context of the play. Do you want to take that? Do you have a favorite line you want to share? Well, I think more for me is the visual reference from Bill Valley, the linea le jange, which is like an iconic 90s Bollywood movie where the female lead kind of runs to catch her hero on the train, her male counterpart. So she's chasing him. He's on the train. He's on the train and he's kind of like holding his hand out. Waiting for her to catch up to him. She's late at South Asian, so late. She's running. And so she just like is running and then she catches the train and it's a happy ending. Okay. Spoiler alert. And so we kind of pay homage to that in our first song where the... And the last. And the last, yeah. Talking about the bride is going to go with the groom as like most love stories at the end. And so she's like running. We kind of physically create the train and she runs and catches the train. And so for me, that's kind of a cool... Yeah, interesting layer. Yeah. Yeah. And so actually this... I'm glad you brought up the play because Bill Valley Dulhania, not the play, the movie. Bill Valley Dulhania Le Jange is a very important movie in this context of Bollywood because as you know Bollywood is not the whole 100 years of Hindi cinema. Yeah. And in 1995, historically speaking, Bill Valley Dulhania Le Jange was the movie that opened Bollywood up to global audiences and made it into a global genre of song and dance extravaganza. Right. Affectionately called DDLJ. DDLJ. Yeah. We have to go Google that one. And so the very first song that Kripa is referring to, the last line, as I wrote the poem, I kept the last line, the name of the movie, which itself is a self-reference from Hindi movies past. So people need to do a lot of research. Layers. Layers. I love the layers. But let's talk about the women in Bollywood because a lot of the films portray women who are, like you say, running for the men and expressing their grief, heartbrokenness because of what they didn't get. And what is the position of a woman, particularly in the Bollywood world? And what are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, I can start, and then I'll let you speak too, because it's also very important to note that I grew up in India. And I was born in the 70s, so I grew up in a different time than Kripa. And Kripa grew up in America. And so it's also important to realize that there's not one South Asian identity or one Bollywood experience to everybody. And Bollywood itself in Hindi cinema has been changing so much and so rapidly, especially since the mid-90s and then after the turn of the century. So this is a very huge and complicated issue about women in Bollywood. You cannot make one statement. So in context to a mid-summer night's dream, perhaps, and the type of women in that play, how do you feel about the image or the portrayal of women? It's very important, especially because it came out in the process a lot. Because any time when I was working with Michelle, for example, or with the beloved characters, every time there was a context of South Asianness, instead of me saying, this is who you are and this is how it is and this is how things are in South Asia and Bollywood, it was an empowering experience for them to take charge of their character and make decisions of what I would do here. So there's actually a beautiful line, one of the best lines that affects me. When Hermia slash Hema's character, she's in the middle of this tumult when her father says, no, you're not going to marry this man. You're going to marry this man. And she refuses, right? And she says, I know not by what power I'm made bold, but I will not follow your dictation and I will follow my heart. And we kind of crafted that scene beautifully because it has a fight in it, it has all the spices in it, but then that was an empowering moment for her. When we kind of blocked it, that she splits away from it, she looks to the audience and she looks to her lover and says, I know not. It's from the power of love that I'm made bold and this is what I'm going to do. I love that. Let's hold that thought because that's a loaded one and it's a beautiful one. That's relevant to many, many people who've had love experiences. We're going to take a quick break. We'll come back and we'll continue diving into how Bollywood works with Shakespeare on the portrayal of women. Don't go away. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate and power and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. And we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff, so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Welcome back to Quack Talk. I'm Crystal here talking to Saiyan Kripa about the interesting portrayal of women in Bollywood. And let's continue our conversation. Saiyan, you just mentioned a very interesting part of the production of A Midsummer Night's Bollywood Dream. Kripa, what do you have to say about your interpretation of the women in Bollywood? Well, I think I'm glad that you brought up different South Asian experiences. I think that I, growing up, connected with Bollywood best through dance, and I think that that dance context has a lot of different kind of power. Obviously, you know, there's a lot of the fun and jazzy aspects that everyone associates with Bollywood, but there's also profound sadness that gets portrayed through dance. There's grace, power through some of the leading, leading ladies of Bollywood, if I could say that. And so I think that while we do have kind of the fun, jazzy aspects in our show, I think it's also kind of trying to portray strength in the women characters, especially the fairy queen where the, you know, the fairy dancers are kind of, we've talked about this a lot, or portraying her subconscious and kind of manifest her anger and her frustration and her sadness and her happiness. We're talking about Titania, the queen of the fairies. Yes, yes, except she's called Tarana. What is she called in the Tarana? Okay. Which means music or tune. Is that based on a goddess figure or something in the culture? No, no, it was linguistic. Oh, okay, okay. But Titania does embody a lot of sexuality. And so you're saying that you kind of use the fairies to represent her subconscious? That's a really interesting. Yeah, because when we started choreographing, it soon sort of came to me that these guys were not just sort of like extra dancers in the background that just repeating what the main character is saying. That they were really her subconscious in the sense that they were manifesting what was in her mind when she's sleepy, they're sleepy, when she's angry, they're angry. And then instead of being her extras, they became her badass bodyguards. Her defense kind of her. Yeah, yeah. So there's a spell in which they dispel vile things in the forest so that she's protected. And so the choreography is such that they just create this storm around her, protect her, you know, shoot arrows at vile things that come. So they really have become badass bodyguards for Torana, yeah. How do you, because I know I've taken a couple of classes in your Hollywood and you like to get experiences from the students and how they feel a gesture represents a certain thing. Right, right. And so there must be a lot of participation on your parts to create the movements. Yes, I mean we spent hours, literally hours going over one move. Is this right? Does it represent what we want? And we are constantly kind of being inspired by our own journey throughout the process. And so I mean we've been changing things just based off of what feels right and what. Can you give an example of a gesture that came from some deeper thought? I mean a few things that we did for example when these guys storm in from the audience and then push the pucks around because they are trying to disrupt Torana. I think that's one of the most powerful moments. And they just create this line of defense and yeah. Yeah, like we're physically kind of creating barriers that she's creating mentally with her anger towards the pucks. And Aviman, what is his experience character? Oberon, Oberon, yeah. Can we talk a little bit? I know we don't have that much time but the sexuality aspect in mid-summer mainstream, the concept and the image of the forest and you know escaping into a place where you don't want to, you want to defy the rules and expectations of you as a woman. How do you feel about that? How does that play out and how is that relevant to us today as women? How much do we take charge? Because you mentioned before the break about Hermia saying, I am not going to follow my dad's expectations. I want to follow my heart. How does that work today? Are we too free to choose? I don't know. I'm just, let's bring relevance to it. I think all different aspects are present in sexuality, in womanhood, in just knowing who you are as a person. You cannot be empowered without having vulnerable, tender moments as well. I think all of these need to be built into the wholeness of what sexuality means or what womanhood means or how we operate as individuals really. I always say that in any human relationship you have all these elements built in that if there are these two people, sometimes one overpowers the other, sometimes the person who's overpowered subverts the relation comes from underneath. At other times they need each other for perfect balance. At another time one supports the soaring to high heavens of the other person. It's not like a linear progression of I was vulnerable one time and now I'm empowered. All these moments are constantly, I mean really the dance. Look at that. You just did it yesterday. Here they kind of represent a lot. All these moments are constantly happening and the real empowerment I think is being self-aware of these moments and when we are in it and how we negotiate them and how we become all of it together constantly. I think you can't avoid the sexuality aspect of it just because Shakespeare is who he was and the way he writes is kind of like throwing a certain thing but I think that Bollywood dance isn't that one-dimensional so although there are obviously sensual aspects to any movement there's also so much more to that style of dance and it doesn't manifest itself in the same way that maybe western dance associates with it and it could just be with like an eye movement or the way you move your hand and so I think that it's also like a different perception of what you think is romantic or sensual or powerful or whatever. And we have all of those aspects built in so there's a love song between Hema and Sikander Please don't come near me, I need to be alone in the forest. So it's like we're celebrating, I hate to say that we're cheesy but it's a fun soap opera-ish way of expressing and at the same time there's so much embedded underneath it, subtleties of where it comes from. I always bring this example because Mel Brooks is my god. And you know how Mel Brooks comedies are? They're really over the top but they are based in the respect and thorough knowledge of what he's parodying. I wouldn't call a parody but it's self-aware. That it's making fun of the genre, the icons, but also embodying it and loving it and really feeling the energy and fun and all the efforts that go into it all together. Well I hope this play gives the audience a chance to embody this kind of cultural play with such a classic and all these things. Is there anything you want to share about the production that we want people to take away? I think it's a great starting point for Bollywood even if you don't know anything about it and you come in and you just want to check it out. I think it inspires a lot of, even for me as someone who's grown up watching Bollywood movies I've already learned so much just through kind of seeing the way Sae thinks about Bollywood versus the way I think about it and also just, you know, it's like a new kind of, a new style, a new combination of genres and I think it's worth checking out, you know? Yeah, for all types, all ages. Oh yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of, I mean I've seen the rehearsal so many times and I've worked with individual actors but every single time we rehearse I'm like laughing out loud. Oh good, that is so fun, I can't wait to see it. Let's talk a little bit about the details of the show. Do you want to share? Sure, so it's February 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 9th and 10th in the Kennedy Theatre on campus. Yeah, and other ticket prices, people can go on to the website and buy tickets or go to the Kennedy Theatre. The tickets are already on sale for quite some time now, students get discounted. So not to be missed, I mean this is really, really exciting. I'm going to leave with both of you giving us a favorite quote from a Midsummer Night Story. Oh my gosh. Oh come on. I have to think about that. You can sing the opening song. Oh you just sing a little line, oh come on, give us a little taste. In the wedding of Dollywood, we will come to Shakespeare. We will show you the plays, we will make a dream come true in a few nights. We will take you, we will take you, we will take you, we will take you, we will take you, we will take you, we will take you. That's beautiful, thank you. I don't have a quote, you're doing the song. Sayid, give us our quote. Oh, so translate, come on, quick translation. Oh yeah, the translation is Shakespeare is coming to a Bollywood wedding. Knowingly, unknowingly, let's see what plays they play. They'll craft awesome dreams in half moonlit nights. The ones with heart, the ones with love and heart will take away the bride. So dreams, the key word for this. For me, my favorite is, I think Titania says something at some point, if man is but asked if she goes about to expound his dream. Referring to ask, would she dream? Making love to an ass, which I think a lot of women accidentally do. So interpret it whichever way you want, this is a beautiful production. Thank you both for sharing your voices as a woman, as a dancer, as a director, as everything. And you embody so much and we're really, really grateful. And good luck with the production. And go see it, it's just an amazing thing. Next, a midsummer night's Bollywood dream. Alright, thank you for joining us.